The best omnichannel customer engagement platform: Insider

Specifically, we’ll explore Insider’s essential omnichannel customer engagement capabilities, like:

• Broad channel support.
• Advanced personalization.
• AI-powered automation and journey orchestration.
• And more.

We’ll also look at three real-life examples of companies that used Insider to drive revenue, conversions, and customer retention by reaching the right people, on the right channels, at the right times, and with the right messaging,

Insider can help you build and automate consistent, personalized omnichannel campaigns across all touchpoints customers have with your brand—from your website and mobile app to channels like email, SMS, and WhatsApp. 

Visit our website or schedule a demo with our team to learn more.

What is an omnichannel customer engagement platform?

An omnichannel customer engagement platform is a type of software that lets you reach users on many channels — like email, push notifications, live chat, SMS, WhatsApp, and more — with relevant, timely, and personalized messaging.

These platforms use real-time data to uncover customers’ preferred channels, products, and engagement times, usually with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. 

As a result, they can deliver highly individualized messages, content, and product recommendations to each user on the channels and at the times they prefer. This fosterscustomer loyalty and long-term retention.

Omnichannel customer engagement platforms also consolidate all channels into a single place, making it much easier for marketers to build, manage, and analyze campaigns. This makes them a fantastic choice for larger brands that already use a bunch of channels to contact customers, as marketers can streamline their workflows, instead of constantly jumping between tools. 

How Insider can help you build, implement, and analyze your omnichannel customer engagement strategy

As we mentioned, Insider combines essential functionalities that make it an ideal omnichannel customer engagement solution for large brands — including broad channel support, advanced personalization, and AI-powered journey orchestration.

Over 1200 brands like Adidas, Toyota, Coca-Cola, Gap, CNN, and Lexus use Insider to personalize their communications across all touchpoints, build successful omnichannel campaigns, and nurture long-term profitable customer relationships.

Besides being the leading omnichannel marketing platform, Insider also ranks as the best solution in key categories like:

• Personalization software.
• Marketing automation software.
• Customer data platforms (CDPs).

Below, we’ll explore how this combination of versatile capabilities can help you:

• Home in on the right audiences for your omnichannel campaigns.
• Reach customers on their preferred channels and at their preferred times.
• Automate tons of routing tasks around segmentation, journey creation, campaign management, and more.
• And much more.

#1 Broad channel support

Before you can be successful with omnichannel engagement, you need to actually reach customers where they’re at. To do that, many brands used a mix of point solutions, e.g., email marketing platforms, SMS tools, push notification software, and so on.

However, this approach creates data silos and makes for incredibly cumbersome workflows. In fact, some of the case studies we’ll explore later came as a result of companies outgrowing their fragmented martech stacks and facing serious difficulties in building omnichannel campaigns.

That’s why Insider brings together 12+ channels under one roof. This means you can use our platform to reach customers via:

• Your website and mobile app.
• Channels like email, push notifications, SMS, and WhatsApp.
• Social media and search ads (e.g., across Facebook, Google, and TikTok).
• And other touchpoints.

This means you can consolidate your marketing stack into a single platform which results in:

• Easier workflows.
• Better marketing ROI.
• Maximized marketing budget and efforts.

As an aside, you don’t have to use Insider for all your channels right away. Our platform is versatile, so you can start with just one or two channels (e.g., on-site and email) and gradually expand to other ones as you see the impact Insider has on your business.

#2 Data unification and segmentation

Besides the ability to bring all your channels together, Insider lets you aggregate your customer data into a single convenient place. 

This is possible thanks to our industry-leading CDP — a solution that unifies customer data and creates 360-degree customer profiles that serve as a foundation for successful omnichannel marketing.

Insider’s flexible API and integrations for 100+ popular solutions allow it to ingest data from:

• CRMs like Salesforce, Pipedrive, HubSpot, and Oracle Netsuite.
• Ad networks for social media and search like Google and Facebook.
• Analytics and attribution platforms like Mixpanel, Amplitude, and AppsFlyer.
• Marketing automation platforms like Pardot, Keap, and Marketo.
• eCommerce platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce.
• Loyalty solutions software like Voucherify and Yotpo.
• And many other solution providers.

As a result, you can overcome data silos — one of the key issues that hinder brands’ omnichannel engagement efforts.

Once your data is unified with Insider, our platform automatically creates detailed, 360-degree customer profiles containing key information including:

• Customers’ names, demographics, and channel reachability.
• Predictive characteristics, like the likelihood to purchase or engage on a specific channel.
• Behavioral data, like customers’ interactions with your website or messaging channels, purchase histories, and more.

Plus, the CDP comes at no extra cost when using the Insider platform. This means you don’t have to pay anything to lay a solid foundation of unified, accurate customer data for your omnichannel campaigns.

Insider also offers highly advanced segmentation capabilities that help you find the right audiences for each campaign. You can segment using 120+ traits, behaviors, and attributes across three categories:

• Standard audiences (e.g., demographics, devices, platforms).
• Pre-defined audiences (e.g., cart abandoners, channel interactions).
• AI-powered predictive audiences (e.g., likelihood to purchase or engage on a channel).

You can also drastically speed up this process with Sirius AI — our generative AI solution that helps marketing teams achieve up to 60% higher productivity and efficiency.

Sirius AI can create segments for you using a simple text prompt. All you have to do is tell it what your end goal is, e.g., increasing engagement, reducing churn, generating more sales, and so on. 

#3 Advanced personalization

So, you now have a great foundation of unified data and precise segments. You can also reach customers across a plethora of channels.

The next step in the omnichannel process is to personalize the user experience across each touchpoint. This means delivering relevant content, messaging, and product recommendations at every stage of the customer lifecycle.

Insider excels in this area as well. For example, you can use our product recommendation engine to deliver highly relevant suggestions to each website visitor.

Insider lets you choose from a variety of recommendation strategies, including:

• User-based, recently viewed, and purchased with last purchased, all of which rely on product and user data to automatically deliver personalized product recommendations to each individual user. 
• Cookie-free based, which relies only on product data to deliver different types of recommendations, like trending products, highest discounted products, new product arrivals, frequently purchased together, and more. 

You can make the on-site experience even more engaging by delivering personalized site search results and Instagram-like stories with:

• EUREKA, which is our tool that powers the search functionality of websites to help people find what they’re looking for in the shortest possible time. This leads to lower bounce rates, higher conversions, and more revenue. 

• InStory, which is our tool for adding engaging, Instagram-like stories to your mobile website or app. These stories can be personalized to each user who opens them. Dover Saddlery used these stories to drive $1.7 million in incremental revenue.

You can also expand your personalization efforts to all other channels that your customers are using. For example:

• Email. Insider lets you create tailored emails (and entire campaigns) for all sorts of scenarios and audiences. For example, you can create welcome flows for new subscribers, use targeted price drop emails to induce first purchases, deliver relevant product recommendations to encourage repeat purchases, use AMP to build interactive experiences, and much more.

• WhatsApp. With Insider, you can take full advantage of WhatsApp’s marketing potential by sending personalized promo messages, discount and price drop alerts, event reminders, and more. You can even use WhatsApp Commerce to design end-to-end shopping experiences that enable customers to browse, add to cart, and buy items without leaving the app.

• Social media and search ads. You can use the segments created by Insider to improve your return on ad spend (ROAS) and other key metrics for your online ads. Thanks to our integrations with Facebook, Google, and TikTok, you can create ad campaigns that target customers based on the products and attributes they’ve shown interest in, as well as their predictive characteristics (like their likelihood to purchase or discount affinity).

The same level of personalization is available for SMS, push notifications, chatbots, and all other channels that Insider supports. Put simply, you can use Insider to tailor communications across all touchpoints from one place.

#4 Cross-channel customer journey builder

Once you’re able to reach customers when they’re at and personalize their experience, Architect — our journey builder and marketing automation tool — lets you tie all touchpoints into cohesive omnichannel journeys.

With Architect, you can:

• Build and automate omnichannel marketing campaigns.
• Create a consistent omnichannel experience across every touchpoint.
• Save time and effort by automating your workflows with the help of AI.

All of this is controlled via a simple drag-and-drop editor that lets you build automated journeys. These can be activated by events, attribute changes, price drops, past user behaviors, and other triggers shown below.

You can also select wait times between steps, instruct Architect to check specific conditions before sending a message, and much more.

Plus, you have access to some key AI-powered capabilities that can help you build, automate, and implement the right omnichannel customer engagement strategy:

• Send-Time Optimization (STO) determines the right time to contact each customer and automatically sends them messages at that time. This is a great way to put an essential part of omnichannel engagement on autopilot.
• Next-Best Channel analyzes recipients’ behaviors to find out which touchpoint is best in each scenario. This is particularly useful if you don’t know how to continue a journey or campaign beyond a certain point.

• The A/B Test Winner-Autoselection automatically determines the winning variant in your A/B tests (based on your criteria) and guides users to them after running the experiment for a set amount of time. This saves you time and effort from having to manually review and tweak your tests based on their results.

• Text, image, and journey generation powered by generative AI. Sirius AI can drastically speed up your campaign creation process by generating text, images, and even entire journeys. Just like with the segmentation process, you only need to provide a text prompt with your end goal.

Put simply, Architect lets you build personalized omnichannel campaigns that exceed customer expectations during all stages of their lifecycle with your brand — from acquisition and onboarding to engagement, retention, and advocacy.

If you’re interested, we explore Architect’s capabilities and various omnichannel strategies in our guides to:

• eCommerce marketing automation.
• Omnichannel marketing automation.
• Using our customer journey builder to boost revenue.

#5 Fast time-to-value thanks to extensive templates and an experienced support team

We know from experience that omnichannel marketing can by overwhelming for many teams. That’s why we’ve made sure to simplify and speed up the process as much as possible.

First, Insider comes with tons of proven and easily customizable templates. Marketers can use these templates without any coding, allowing them to launch campaigns without a heavy reliance on technical teams.

For example, you can find templates for:

• Individual channels like on-site, email, push notifications, SMS, and WhatsApp.
• Specific use cases (including omnichannel ones), like gamifying the lead generation process, celebrating customer milestones, cross-selling items to generate higher AOV, and much more.

Second, we also have experienced global support teams that help you get started and see value from our platform right away.

Specifically, our customer support teams:

• Help you set up Insider (with no extra setup charge).
• Ensure you’re connected to the right data sources and are using the right tools and channels.
• Analyze your current analytics data before the first kick-off meeting. This lets them come up with relevant tactics and strategies that can generate quick wins for you.

As a result, most customers rank us at the top of categories like ease of setup, ease of use, support quality, and time-to-value compared to other popular omnichannel platforms.

The impact of successful omnichannel customer engagement (3 real-life examples)

While you can find plenty of theoretical omnichannel tactics online, their results are often unclear. 

That’s why we want to round out this article with a look at how real brands approach omnichannel customer engagement and the results they see in terms of conversions, return on investment (ROI), and other key metrics.

Slazenger: Achieving a 49x ROI and a 700% increase in customer acquisition

Slazenger is one of the world’s most established sports brands. They were looking to engage their customers with more accurate and timely communications across channels and improve the ROI from their martech stack.

Insider’s broad channel support and versatile customer journey builder were an ideal fit for those goals. For example, Slazenger’s team used Architect to:

• Entice shoppers to return to the site with price drop notifications. To do so, they used discount emails and web push notifications that were targeted and relevant based on each recipient’s interests and preferences. This resulted in a 12.1% click-through rate (CTR) increase compared to their regular campaigns.
• Recover lost revenue with personalized omnichannel cart abandonment messaging. Like most other eCommerce brands, Slazenger was looking for ways to reduce cart abandonments. Using our platform, they targeted cart abandoners with automated and personalized notifications on the channel they preferred (email, on-site, web push, or SMS). This helped them recover 40% of potentially lost revenue within a single campaign.

Overall, Slazenger’s new personalized omnichannel customer experiences enabled the brand to achieve a 700% increase in customer acquisition and 49x ROI within eight weeks. We’ve gone over their full approach to omnichannel marketing in the case study on our website.

NA-KD: Generating a 72x ROI and a 25% increase in CLTV

NA-KD is one of Europe’s 20 fastest-growing fashion brands. This rapid expansion was amazing but it also came with some challenges. 

Mainly, NA-KD’s tech stack wasn’t able to keep up, as their data remained locked off in disconnected systems. As a result, their team wasn’t able to leverage its full potential, resulting in suboptimal business results and disjointed customer experiences. 

The first step NA-KD took to overcome this problem was to unify their customer data with Insider’s CDP. This gave them the much-needed 360-degree views of their customers, which served as a foundation for orchestrating personalized experiences at scale.

At this point, they were well-equipped to start with their omnichannel customer engagement strategy. They ditched traditional campaign and coupon-based marketing in favor of creating individualized experiences with Architect across all touchpoints, including:

• Email and SMS.
• Push notifications.
• Their website and mobile app.

These coordinated omnichannel journeys helped NA-KD achieve a 25% uplift in customer lifetime value (CLTV) and a 72x ROI in 12 months. You can learn more about NA-KD’s omnichannel approach on our website.

Clarins: Driving a 30x ROI and a 45% increase in lead capture

Clarins is one of the leaders in the global cosmetics industry. While they experienced fantastic growth across their eCommerce properties, they quickly outgrew their martech stack. This resulted in data silos that prevented them from using key insights during the entire customer lifecycle.

To overcome this problem, Clarins consolidated their stack of point solutions into Insider. They used our enterprise CDP to unify their customer data into a single convenient database.

From here, they used our gamified “Wheel of Fortune” template to inject urgency and excitement into their lead collection process. This resulted in a 45% increase in lead capture and over 8500 new users identified. 

They also leveraged Insider’s AI-powered product recommendations and cross-channel customer journey builder. This enabled them to deliver relevant, tailored, and consistent customer experiences across all communication channels.

Their work produced a 4% uplift in conversion rates and 30x ROI in 12 weeks. For more details on their challenges and approach, check out the full case study on our site.

Drive conversions, revenue, and retention with Insider’s omnichannel customer engagement platform

Insider is an ideal omnichannel customer engagement platform for midsized and enterprise companies looking to build personalized, automated, and highly effective campaigns across touchpoints — from websites and mobile apps to channels like email, push notifications, SMS, WhatsApp, and more.

Our enterprise marketing platform can:

• Create end-to-end personalized customer experiences across all channels and at scale.
• Aggregate your customer data from all online and offline sources into a central database.
• Create detailed 360-degree profiles of your customers and reveal their behaviors, interests, and preferred touchpoints.
• Predict future customer behaviors, like how much they’re projected to spend and how likely they are to buy or engage with your brand on a specific channel.
• Automate lots of difficult tasks around omnichannel campaign creation and management, such as choosing the right channels and moments to engage customers.

Finally, our easy channel integrations, experienced support team, and versatile templates will help you implement your omnichannel customer engagement strategy as quickly as possible.

Schedule a demo with our team to learn how Insider can benefit your business specifically.